Elections 2024: Why does vote count not equal votes cast on few seats? ECI gives 2 reasons

The Election Commission on Thursday clarified on the differences between votes polled and votes counted, attributing it to certain votes not being counted as per rules.

A user on social media platform X alleged discrepancy between total votes cast on EVMs and total votes counted, sometimes amounting to thousands.

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Poll body explains mismatch

Uttar Pradesh's chief electoral officer responded, explaining that such differences can occur due to specific protocols. Some polling stations’ votes are not counted due to:

1. The Presiding Officer failing to clear mock poll data from the Control Unit before starting the actual poll or not removing mock poll slips from the VVPAT.

2. A mismatch between the total votes polled in the Control Unit and the record in Form 17-C prepared by the Presiding Officer due to an error.

Votes from these polling stations are only counted at the end if their total is equal to or greater than the margin between the first and second candidates. If the total is lower than the margin, these votes are not counted, leading to the observed differences between votes polled by EVMs and votes counted, the poll body said.

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Many seats decided by slim margin

The counting of votes for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections was completed on Tuesday. According to the Election Commission of India, the BJP won 240 seats and, with its allies, secured a total of 293 seats. The INDIA bloc has over 230 MPs in the new parliament, with the Congress strength touching 100 after independent MP Vishal Patil extended support to the grand old party. In several constituencies, the results were decided by just a few thousand votes.

One of the closest contests was in the Mumbai North West constituency in Maharashtra, where Ravindra Dattaram Waikar of Shiv Sena defeated Amol Gajanan Kirtikar of Shiv Sena (UBT) by only 48 votes.

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Another tight race was in Kerala's Attingal constituency, where Adoor Prakash of INC narrowly defeated V Joy of CPI (M) by 684 votes.